A girl’s view of sustainability and social media

Let’s Think About the Trees

I just came back from trip to Honolulu. For those of you who have been there, you probably noticed the spectacular old trees that stand tall all over the Hawaii capital. I certainly did. I also noticed the absence of new trees, and the long stretches of cement, with no shade to protect people from the scorching sun. Planting a tree is so simple, and such a great investment. So, how come the city officials in Honolulu, do not make the trees more of a priority? The big talk is about building a mass transit system, that would cost 3.7 billion dollars. The mayor has made it the main theme for his reelection campaign. That’s all good. And that’s no excuse for forgetting the trees.

In my own city of Palo Alto, I have been remarking on the same problem, although to a lesser extent. Trees missing here and there, along tree lined streets, and no replacement in sight. Across the freeway, in East Palo Alto, the situation is even more blight. Hardly any trees. Its residents have other worries than planting trees, too busy they are to survive, and stay safe.

I have been wondering for a while, what is it with the trees that makes them the forgotten child of environmental policies? Part of it is taking for granted what gives us so much, and asks so little in return. If tomorrow, the trees were removed from our urban landscapes, we would instantly notice, and plead to get the green giants back.

Just when I thought I was done thinking about the trees, I get this mail from Glenn Pricket, the head of Conservation International:

“The CO2 emissions from deforestation are greater than the emissions from the world’s entire transportation sector-all the cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships combined. Less forest cover means fewer acres of habitat for species, so they must move or adapt. Those that can survive; those that cannot, go extinct. … There have to be limits to how much and where we encroach on the natural world.”

Call me clueless, but that is news to me. I had no idea trees in faraway places were this critical to our survival. And that is a problem. Our collective ignorance is doing a number on us.

I take issue with the clever tagline used in the Conservation International campaign. “Lost there, felt here” fails to capture the whole issue. I am not, you are not feeling it “here”. The challenge is how to translate this remote tragedy, into one that’s personally relevant to all the world citizens. More accurate would be “Lost there, problem for you”.

Ah! Same crap everywhere. Atleast there mayor has forgotten trees, but here in India, many people hate trees. They say if we plant a tree, there homes will be hidden by the trees !!!! They say birds make there cars dirty.😦

There are a few reasons trees aren’t much talked about in environmental discussions.

One is that it’s partly an image thing. Long before anyone thought about climate change, there were “tree huggers” – and just as women will say, “I’m not a feminist, but -” so too will environmentalists say, “I’m not a tree-hugger, but -“. Both are groups which feel themselves in the minority, and are (nowadays) scared to stand out.

A second is that deforestation largely happens in the Third World – forests are stable or growing in most of the West. This deforestation is largely caused by two factors – our desire for burgers and timber products, and by the world’s poor. Eating large amounts of meat is only possible with large amounts of land, either pasture or grain land for the animals. Having half a dozen newspapers and magazines a week is only possible with lots of forest-clearing. We in the West don’t want to eat less meat or have less paper stuff.

The world’s poor generally have no means of support, the only way to eat is grow their own food. But they have no land, so they make some land – by clearing some forest. Or in other places they lived on the forested land for generations, and whatever the government says, they feel it’s theirs, so they log it. Often this ties in with the West’s demand for timber products, as locals make deals with illegal logging companies to clear their own forests. Deforestation may kill you in twenty years (see Haiti), but hunger will kill you this week. Obviously the world’s poor are not going to volunteer to starve to death so that we can continue driving our SUVs and have our airconditioners blazing away night and day without guilt, and we’re not going to press the issue.

The third reason is that solutions favoured by governments and corporations are those which require governments and corporations – One Big Facility, or a Five Year Plan. Carbon capture and storage, miles of solar panels or railways, emissions trading schemes and the like, these all take lots of bureaucrats and lots of planning and spending of public money and those putting them forward go to lots of meetings and conferences and cocktail parties.

Whereas people just planting and caring for trees, not so much. It’s the same reason they’ll spend $2 billion on a reservoir but not $1 billion on giving homes water tanks with a greater total water capacity. One Big Facility – it’s the government and corporate way.

Steve, agree with you that climbing trees is one of those forgotten pleasures from childhood, from way back. Now, the only time you hear about tree climbing is in the paper, as during recent treesitter protest at UC Berkeley. As pointed by Kyle, not very useful PR for the trees . . .

Wow, Kyle. All I need to do is raise a question, and you come up with all these great answers. Thanks so much for your contribution. You add so much to the collective knowledge here and elsewhere.

Have you thought of contributing to collective sustainability knowledge platforms such as Green Wikia, or Appropedia?

Back to your point, it strikes me that trees, not unlike energy efficiency or conservation, represent low tech, easy to achieve solutions. Not sexy, for intellectuals or techies, and not spectacular enough, for politicians. A PR problem, that I would like to tackle. I would also throw biodiversity into the mix.

I am adding this link, for those of you interested. New research shows that maintaining biodiversity of original tree forests is essential for ecosystem to work properly, and also to maximize carbon offset – and minimize carbon emissions – from forest. I left comment there raising question of implications of such research for certifications of carbon offset forestation projects, many of which currently rely on single species plantations.

Yeah, this is a well-known thing amongst interested people. Basically, one big 100 square mile forest is a lot better – in biodiversity, carbon storage, as a watershed, everything – than ten 10 square mile, or one hundred 1 square mile forests. And old forests are better than plantations. And natives are better than exotics.

In other words, the way nature does it turns out to be the best. Whodathunkit?

I just did a quick & dirty search to see if you’ve already covered this woman’s work and found nothing here. So, I trust y’all may appreciate these links to a real, live, tree-lovin’, tree-huggin’, recent Nobel Laureate = Professor Wangari Maathai:

I first ran across her work via the film “Nobelity”, which I highly recommend.

Will we humans ever have the kind of appreciation for our respiration-partners (i. e., trees in particular and plant-life in general) that alert scuba-divers have for the contents of the oxygen tanks strapped to their backs? Probably not and yet we ought to … In addition to air, food, clothing, shelter and recreational-climbing (the value of which is so thoroughly underestimated that I’m glad it’s twice been mentioned here), the value of the ecosystem-service of water-retention that trees/plants provide is difficult to overestimate.

A couple of other brilliant plant-lovers who weren’t ashamed to admit that they actually communicated (in a way) with plants were Luther Burbank and George Washington Carver.

Rudolf Steiner’s work via biodynamic agriculture demonstrated an insightful appreciation for the various relationships among the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. I’m pretty sure Steiner was in part inspired by a little-known book by the philosopher/poet Goethe, “Metamorphosis of Plants”

In terms of appreciating biodiversity, Francis of Assisi is one of my heroes.

Our city fathers had some sense when they set up this city. We have a wide town belt right through the centre which is maintained as old forest. This requires work to keep out invading species from foreign places but it sure adds a great dimension to the living. There is a narrow road from end to end where you feel a million miles from the city centre but which is really only a few hundred meters from it.

Most trees over a certain size are protected no matter where they are and to damage one will get you a large fine and a replacement order.

There are also around 200 trees which are listed specially as protected. Touch these at your peril.

This is exactly why FSC, Forest Stewardship Council is fighting to remain a part of LEED credits. Other wood standards slide on their requirements. FSC is a standard that the environmental groups support. SMaRT is also a standard that is supported by environmental groups. (http://mts.sustainablestandards.com)

Sorry .. I do not want to create a new account at the Huffington Post and so decided to leave my message here. My comment has nothing to do with this post, which I have not read yet.

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I too enjoyed some of the Palin jokes and humor too (though some did go overboard) but like I wrote at my blog this weekend.. all of it resonates only with the already “converted”.

And so, I agree with the singer William.I.Am, who hit the nail on the head, when in a discussion on Bill Maher’s show*, said: “You know what scares me about Palin, is that we’re talking about Palin, and we’re not talking about how we really get out of the hole. That’s what’s really scary.”

That’s where Dems and all Obama supporters has to focus this election season. THE ISSUES. Not about the woman or how unqualified she is for her role… because amidst all the partisan rhetoric and name-calling, the message is going to be lost.

So…yes… like Andrew Sullivan says later in the same episode…we need to speak up and speak more about the REAL issues: the economy, renewable energy, etc.; and not go overboard in our he-said-she-said (let alone the personal) attacks.

More over at my blog, but – further on the image issue, when environmentalists start talking about trees, often the thought that comes to mind is people like this (not a parody). But the real people talking about trees are more like this.

Can I ask where you live? It would be worth it doing a video of your city forest. As important as the witnessing of tree killings, is the documentation of preservation successes, and of the way those affects humans living in their midst.

Kyle, great videos, both of them. Agree that “normal” people are a lot more effective in engaging other “normal” people on tree issues. Although, I am impressed with the level of feeling and deep care displayed by the hippie crowd. . .

Of course, I know about Wangari Maathai. The problem, as mentioned by Kyle is one of PR, and how to engage the people. As charismatic as she is, her story in faraway Kenya, is not resonating with deep America. Actually, I am pretty sure if you did a survey, to find out how many people here, know her, you would find the numbers to be dismal. Americans, Westerners need their own versions of Wangari.

As Kyle pointed, trees suffer from an image problem. Not just because of their association with “extreme” treehugger types, but also because trees are as old as can be, and we are a culture that does not value old things – and people – very much. Same problem with energy conservation. It strikes me how much talk is done about building new energy efficient homes, or remodeling old ones according to new standards. But what about the old houses? Can’t they be made more energy efficient to? A caulk gun is not sexy but can go a very long way towards conserving energy . . . Same mentality across the board.

Actually, Marguerite, a real forest is not old. Some individual trees are, but not the forest as a whole. A real forest is a mixture of young and old trees, of dead trees rotting into the ground and providing food and a place to live for millions of insects and bacteria which are fed on by birds, and so on. A real forest is diverse, it’s young and old, alive and dead, green and brown, wet and dry, it has competition and co-operation.

Countries which are not keen on diversity also tend to be not so keen on a natural environment, and vice versa. You don’t often get racist environmentalists, or Amnesty International members driving Hummers.

There’s certainly some truth in what you say, that because we love “progress” and imagine it to be concreting everywhere, we are averse to the natural environment. But I think the real issue is not that the forest seems unprogressive, or too diverse, but more that we’re cut off psychologically and socially from these natural processes.

As the guy in that YouTube vid said in another one, for most of the history of our being human beings – 100,000 years or so – we spent most of our days in the open air. Now we have societies where people can go four or five days without spending more than two minutes in the open air. Our food comes on little plastic-wrapped trays and we never have to see dirt or blood.

Even many greenish types have this problem, they imagine that the best way to do things is to have our nice non-natural cities, and then everything else be “parks” where nobody is allowed to touch anything – we just walk on by. We live beside nature, not with it. When even the greenish types want to cut us away from it, and never the twain shall meet, how are people supposed to feel a connection?

So this is why some of us encourage things like food-growing gardens, so that people can slowly become aware of those natural processes, and feel connected to them.

A little city of about 120 thousand called Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand. We also have yellow eyed penguins and albatrosses within the city limits (but not the built up parts). I run a craft shop on Baldwin Street – Worlds Steepest. There is a photo of our house in the wikipedia (and about a million other places). We have a new roof and have tidied the front since this photo – we have only been here 4 years. We are the cottage with the white lacework veranda.

The dunedin city council website is worth a look. BTW we are in no way perfect but we do try.

[…] a friend, about to launch a new water efficiency venture, got me thinking about water. Just as with deforestation, and biodiversity loss, I am shocked by the magnitude of the problem, and the corresponding […]